Photos won't show up in iPhoto

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Level 1

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Photos won't show up in iPhoto

My hard drive recently failed and needed to be replaced. After having Apple replace my hard drive, I updated to the new operating system Lion as well as iLife 11. Though I lost everything on my hard drive all of my photos had been backed up onto an external drive. When i retrieved the back up the photos came and were back in iPhoto but with one catch... I can't completely see them. All I get is a black screen with a triangle. Though I thought the photos were completely gone, you can see in on of the photos that the photos are there because they are in the scroll bar at the bottom. Why can't I get to them??? Please help.

iPhoto '11, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 28, 2011 10:58 PM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

164,154 points

Jul 28, 2011 11:33 PM in response to cjordanatet

The ! turns up when iPhoto loses the connection between the thumbnail in the iPhoto Window and the file it represents.

Option 1

Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Rebuild iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup.

If that fails:

Option 2

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one. .

Regards

TD

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Answer 2

Jul 29, 2011 12:56 PM in response to cjordanatet

I began writing this last night but had to stop. TD basically covered the major steps, but these might help as well:

First try to rebuild your iPhoto library by holding down command, option and press the iPhoto icon.

If none of those options work, then you can recover your photos from the iPhoto library by following these steps:

Find your iPhoto library (probably in your Pictures folder inside your home folder) and right click (or control click) on it and choose "Show package contents".

Look for the folder "Masters" and that is where your photos should be stored.

You can create a fresh new iPhoto Library by holding down Option when launching iPhoto and choosing the option to create a new iPhoto library.

Then you can drag the Masters folder into iPhoto to add the photos fresh again.

Rebuilding your iPhoto library and repairing it with the command, option is the best first step, but if you have to, you should be able to get the photos all back by manually adding them back to a fresh iPhoto library.

Obviously the big key thing is once you've got everything back, you'll want to backup stuff ;-)

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